


Witching Hour

by Shayvaalski



Series: The Kids Are Alright [15]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kid Fic, Parent-Child Relationship, Parentlock, seb moran: minder of highly sensitive people, the kids are alright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-23 23:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1584044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of late nights and mornings. </p><p> </p><p>(Please skip to end note for detailed warning/plot summary.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witching Hour

On the third morning after Jim brings the girl into their house, Sebastian wakes up to an open bedroom door and a weight just below his feet, a depression in the mattress. He rubs his face, glances over his shoulder at Jim; still asleep, frowning faintly. Very slowly, very cautiously, Seb gets his elbow underneath his body and pushes himself up enough to look down at the end of the king-size bed, big enough for both of them and more.

When he sees the painfully thin curve of Siobhan’s back he lets out a breath. She’s fast asleep, breathing shallowly into the crook of her own elbow, and if Seb wasn’t buck naked and sure he’d locked that door he’d be almost touched by the way she’s already adopting them. He promises himself he’ll wear boxers to bed from now on, and check the deadbolt twice, then leans forward and lays a hand against her shoulder, gently, so gently.

There’s no interval between his hand against her nightgown and Siobhan’s eyes flickering open, and Seb keeps his body language quiet, his voice low. “You alright, Bhan?”

She nods, wordless, and sits up with a delicacy so considered that Sebastian wonders if she already has a sense that Jim shouldn’t be disturbed on the rare occasions he sleeps—though when he sleeps he sleeps like a dead man. He pulls the sheet around his hips with great care and sits up too. Siobhan rests her chin on her knees, and Seb hesitates, then reaches out again and smoothes her dark hair, halfway loose from its braid.

Before meeting Jim he’d wanted kids, he remembers, like remembering a dream, and Siobhan watches him without speaking.

*** 

Deadbolting the door works right up until it doesn’t.

By the time Siobhan eases it open Sebastian is awake, propped up on one elbow to watch her. She almost doesn’t seem to notice him at first, too intent on making sure the hinges don’t squeak and then on not letting the bottom of the door catch on anything; but after a moment she looks up, and Seb knows she’s been aware of him the whole time.

This time he’s wearing boxers, so when she takes the ten steps to the bed and climbs in with him, he doesn’t try to stop her. She doesn’t seem particularly upset, but he reaches out and tugs her braid gently, getting her to look at him. She’s only just nine. Her eyes are dark brown, pupils a little wide but nothing to worry about. It could just be the low light. The shared glance only lasts a minute, and then she looks away, curls up against his side.

Sebastian lets her. When he wakes up again Jim is stirring, and the hollow in the mattress is still warm.

 ***

Siobhan hasn’t come near either of them for three days running and Sebastian is just starting to get worried when the door creaks open, sometime after midnight. Jim, in his sleep, is murmuring, pillow pulled most of the way over his head, and she pauses briefly, head cocked like a question mark.

“He’s out,” Seb says, quietly. “Come on.”

Her hesitation lasts almost a full minute. Sebastian wonders if she’s too old, finally, if it’s become strange to climb into bed with her parents—she’s just gone thirteen—but at the fifty second mark she moves. Fast. Seb isn’t used to seeing Jim’s fluidity on her body, and he manages, but only barely, not to startle; and then she’s on the end of the bed, knees drawn up against her chest.

“Anything I can do?” He keeps his voice just barely above a whisper. His daughter jerks her head sideways, gracefulness gone as quickly as it came. Half-frustrated, half-concerned, Sebastian puts out a hand to her, palm up; Siobhan looks at it like she’s never seen a hand before, the five fingers, the join of the wrist. This time when she shakes her head it’s gentler. Almost regretful.

Sebastian’s heart aches for her. Realistically he knows she is not lonely, that Moriarty’s breed doesn’t tend to loneliness, but Tommy can’t possibly be enough. Or not enough in the right ways. Six sisters in the O’Doyle house, and Siobhan brought home the boy; he settles back against the pillow and watches out of the corner of his eye as she curls into a ball at their feet, fishing for one of the pillows Jim inevitably pitches off the bed.

In the morning he’ll call Irene. It’s not an ideal solution—the woman has no children—but Jim’s motherliness can only stretch so far.

*** 

By this time Sebastian wakes up when he hears her start picking the lock. He’s replaced it four or five times, just to give Siobhan practice, and he listens to her curse under her breath as she drops one of the torsion wrenches. Beneath the door is a line of light, and a dark patch where she crouches. There’s a longish pause, and then a click, and the line of brightness moves to fill three sides of the doorway. Seb can hear the small sounds of her putting the tools in order, then none at all as she stands. Even he is impressed. Jim moves quietly, but his daughter is as near to silent as Sebastian has ever seen.

Siobhan waits a while before opening the door, lingering in the hall, shifting her weight every minute or so. He’s almost decided she won’t come in and is dozing off when the light brightens, then is cut off.

Beside him, the mattress sinks. Siobhan touches his ankle, perfunctorily, in passing, and then she is just a pale shape at the end of the bed, seventeen but still so small.

“Didn’t go off, then,” he says, an undertone of sound. In the darkness she shrugs.

“Not each other’s type, da. No hard feelings.”

“Huh.” Sebastian knits his fingers together behind his head, looking at the ceiling instead of Siobhan. He has his doubts, heartfelt but private, about the likelihood of any dates going off at any point in time. Sebastian knows he is Jim’s exception, knows it intimately. Knows the worth of the word love, for a Moriarty.

“Maybe you’ll meet someone at Uni.”

His daughter’s posture, when she is alone with her family, is something between his and Jim’s; half military, half arrogant sprawl; out of the bottom of his eye Sebastian can see her, ramrod-straight, taking up more space than seems possible. Siobhan is looking at him, inscrutable. He wonders, the silence stretching, what Tommy can read in her face, and how.

After what seems like a long time she takes what might be pity on him and says, as she gets up, “Maybe.”

*** 

When Siobhan slams through it is when Sebastian realizes he’s forgotten to lock the door; the four seconds of blind panic are enough for his hand to close on empty air where a gun should be. Just as well Mycroft’s men had swept the house clean—otherwise their daughter would have a painful, if almost certainly not deadly, wound in her right arm or shoulder.

Unless he is ordered, these days, Sebastian does not shoot to kill.

Jim doesn’t move, despite the fading echoes of the doorknob striking the wall and Siobhan’s harsh breathing, and after a while Sebastian gets up, shuts the door, and guides Siobhan to the bed. He has to sit her down, all her joints stiff, and then he has to help her put her head between her knees. Then he sits too, one hand between her thin shoulder-blades, the bones like bird’s bones but stronger, one dangling helpless at his side.

“You’re going with him,” he says, once her heartbeat stops shaking her ribs. It’s not a question. Siobhan nods.

“Thomas too?”

Another nod.

“When, pet?”

Siobhan makes a harsh noise, lifts her head, clears her throat. “I’m to get my affairs in order,” she says, savage. “Here and at the flat. I’m _expected_ —” the word like a curse “—in London a week from Sunday. This past Sunday. Bastard. He’s taking mum tomorrow.”

“We’re lucky it wasn’t tonight, Bhan.” She looks away from him. “Siobhan.”

“I know,” she snaps, and in the moonlight she looks so young and so old at once, ten or fifty instead of barely twenty-eight. “I know.”

 ***

Sebastian leaves the door open, and lays awake all night. The hall light is off, and the curtains pulled, so he doesn't have to see the empty space next to him, but he keeps his eyes closed, to be sure.

Just before false dawn Siobhan climbs into bed next to him fully-clothed and silent, and they both fit themselves without touching into the half of the mattress Sebastian has been occupying for decades. He listens to her breathe for a long time, the shallow quickness of it the very image of her mother, the silences between breaths his too.

In the winter, night lasts through dawn and past it. Eventually, Siobhan puts her face into the crook of Sebastian’s shoulder and begins, very quietly, to cry.

He does not think he has ever seen her cry.

 

**Author's Note:**

> As the narrative implies, the final scene occurs after Jim's death, which we haven't yet covered in detail in any of the fics. I do plan to address it more thoroughly, but not quite yet. There's nothing graphic but it's sad, and I'm sorry.


End file.
